iPhone Notes of 4AM walk around my neighborhood in NYC on the morning of 4/2/2024
I am trying to document more of my time alive.
It’s at the advice of my therapist, but against the general thoughts expressed by Mark Fisher regarding the digitization of memory.
I try to stay within a four-block radius of my apartment when I go on walks. Any further, based on my understanding, would make it more likely for me to do something impulsive.
The highest murder rates for New York City were in the early 1990s, during the crack epidemic.
These days, New York ranks third for suicide rates. Not too notable for homicide. It’s a city made for death. I think.
I put a joint in my back pocket to smoke halfway through the walk, but it falls out somewhere between Troutman and Broadway.
The thing about New York, the worst thing, besides the smell…
It’s the noise. On my nightly walks, regardless of the street, or weather, I can hear the rats fumbling around on metal grates just out of sight. Nibbling in a trash bag.
Tonight, I saw two rats collapse out of a thrown-away Ugg boot. There had been part of a sandwich that had somehow been wedged into it, like how a foot should.
Why just a single boot?
Within a 25 mile radius of my apartment, are 4 of the 5 highest ranked cities for suicide in the United States.
Jersey City, Newark, Yonkers, and of course, New York City itself.
It’s not just the urban density. That’s just not how statistics work. There’s something wrong in the air, maybe something secretes from the Hudson.
The original inhabitants of Manhattan, the Lenape tribe, controlled the entirety of that 50 mile-wide suicide circle.
The Lenape, in their first encounter with Europeans—Dutch fur traders—had, unknowingly, traded the entirety of Manhattan for only $24 of goods.
Transactions of that nature, ones that were so devoid of sense and balance, were unknown to them, conceptually.
Surely, the $24 trade was for the Europeans to share the land with them. Not to take it. This is what the Lenape believed.
The rest is basic American history. They lose and we win.
So, walking around at night in the city, the rats swarm over wasted bagel seeds, the homeless pick at their skin outside of less-caring gas stations, and the street cleaners jet chemicals into the concrete.
When I get back after my loop around the blocks, there’s two guys on mopeds across the street. Talking about racing.
It’s a pity that this pathetic place, once a literal swamp, has existed so long without complete failure.
The success of New York City through hundreds of years — it has never made sense to me.
Propped up by transactions generating profit from nothing, shareholders and crony committees—there’s nothing here to even sap resources out of.
It’s really the capitalist utopia. A city of nothing but retained earnings, a majority of which are attributable to accrued interest revenue.
There’s an entire country—I remind myself daily—there’s an entire country.
Still, I think this place should stay right here. Keep all the suicides and rats here and noise all here.
Keep all the suicides right here!